Why is there something rather than nothing? Why/how did our universe emerge? What are we? Where do we come from? Who? What? Where? Why? Feel free to post your opinions, theories, beliefs, discoveries etc. B-)

[ Post made via Android ]

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

The universe emerged out of nothing because nothing is highly unstable. Naturally, there had to be something emerging from quantum fluctuations and no need for a deity to help. In fact, it would have taken a supernatural agency to prevent the Big Bang expansion and preserve the state of nothingness. But there is nothing to preserve in a highly entropic singularity that needs to expand! Hence, the energies of the universe add up to zero and order inevitably emerges from the chaos for entropy is no longer confined to planck dimensions in a superlative state - it has more room to disperse which increases the chances of order emerging in certain parts of the cosmos. Simplicity begets complexity.

I'd like to append the following analogy regarding cosmic expansion:

"The simplest way to see this is with a (literally) homey example. Suppose that whenever you clean your house, you empty the collected rubbish by tossing it out of the window into your yard. Eventually the yard would be filled with rubbish. However, you can continue doing this with a simple expedient. Just keep buying up the land around your house and you will always have more room to toss the rubbish. You are able to maintain localized order - in your house - at the expense of increased disorder in the rest of the universe."

- Victor Stenger

I do not subscribe to existentialism. For me, it is quite clear that consciousness comes much later (after the natural conception of the universe) as an emergent by-product of heavier elements such as carbon arranged in phenomenal complexity. Also, the creationist's brain remains uncreated because their god's supernatural intervention prevents its emergence and preserves the scarcity of their intellect.

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

I avoided this question for a while because I didn't want to fracture my skull and have to sop up the blood and brain matter dripping from my ears after the inevitable brain explosion...

But, now, I feel calm and collected and had a good hypnopompic daydream this morning and have some insight and a radical idea. I've got a lot of great questions to be answered about specific atoms and if they are, or are not, identical. For example a hydrogen atom, the simplest, if the electron of each one in the universe is at the same point in relation to the nuclei. If so, that would help my theory, if not, it debunks it, but listen to this idea.

There is only one thing. Even smaller than an atom, but you can parse it down to one thing, and one thing only, no matter what the name is for it.

The rest are just copies and iterations of the same thing in different combinations we call 'atoms'. The first universe is only the one, the second 2, the third becomes 4 of it, than 8, 16, 32, it grows exponentially. We are living in a universe with an unimaginable number of 'atoms', 'elements', and that deeper singular thing which is quantum and may not have been detected yet or even could be, but it still works. We only experience more than one because of a 'kaleidoscope effect'. It's more than just refracting, and reflecting the same light, it's the fabric of all reality as we know it. I didn't say 'perceive', I said, 'experience'. And we are composed of atoms too, our eye ball, composed of matter views matter. We are the universe perceiving itself.... (need a belt for my head... it's starting to distend!)

That explains why two atoms can never occupy the same space at the same time. I'm still confused about energy, but think that all matter and energy are the same thing ultimately. (Tightens belt....)

So what is that one thing? It's not matter. It's not energy. Is it possibly... consciousness?! (Belt tightens and the buckle is about to break.)

I have no proof, and just using my dreams, and especially hypnopompic ones, to get far out ideas. Perhaps I'm eccentric, but I'm not insane. (Not a crime and something I relish )

I voted for pre-existing consciousness. I didn't expect to see it there, and was planning to go with 'none of the above', but I must say it actually makes more sense to me. Truthfully, the one thing that makes the most sense is that there would be nothing at all! Or just a singularity and that's it. Why is there anything at all!???!

(Dammit, the belt snapped and my head went and exploded again..... I'll get the mop.)

Fire away with your expressions, Jackson. And Hagart, you are certainly not alone. You might like Kierkegaard's existentialism (we exist prior to matter). From my point of view, I daresay that if quantum mechanics plays an important role in consciousness, then it must produce a certain ingredient that would have to be considered as "proto-consciousness" which would then come to frution as a fairly developed consciousness with the evolutionary manifestation of a complex, classical organism with a brain involving a Tonomian system of integrated information. It is, in effect, the best rebuttal I can come up with against your hypothesis. Allow me to append: a pre-existent, eternal, and uncreated consciousness (whatever the nature of such proposed quintessence) is as hard to imagine as a non-state such as true nothingness, is it not?

Whatever the truth, there is still a lot to learn about the quantum realm before we can say that some consciousness willed forms into being. Perhaps Scott Adam's is right in "God's Debris" - In the search for absolute knowledge, and to see what self-destruction would incur, He was a suicide bomber to begin with, and we are pieces of Him assembling (He is learning the answer to His question...

Oddly enough, I seemed to have salvaged the second option in an interesting anti-atheistic twist. It's not even Deism if it began with destruction and He cares, it is a weird kind of pantheism - and when the old man in the story is asked if God is conscious, the old man replies: through me and you, as we speak...

[ Post made via Android ]

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

I went and did my classic... EDIT WHILE OTHERS ARE READING ROUTINE... (I'm such a perfectionist, and with something like this you can't blame me for trying to get my words right!) I'm still not sure what I'm trying to say, but added some more humor and cleared a few things up with a second reading.

I edited this one too a few times, but can never get it right. I wanted to get deep about the universe and lack that in my social life so went here to do it! Can't blame me for not getting all my thoughts together on the first go and just speaking freely. We're just having fun! But it's worth the good ideas.

Now for another deep-thought experiment about existence, consciousness and this thing we dub 'the universe'. I do feel that to understand the universe, we must understand perception. It is linked. Or at least has no relevance or interest to us humans otherwise.

I'm going to go in the opposite direction of quantum and consider the 'macro' for lack of a better word, the larger scale.

Here's my thought experiment:You sit inside a Mech-Warrior, a Mobile-Suite-Gundam, an Evangelian (Pick anime of your choosing, and just look it up if you don't know). These become extensions of your body and linked to your brain (In the EVA case for anime fans reading), so for all intense and purposes you are now a giant, and feel what it feels. (I've gone deep and wondered who the pilot of my own body, Hagart-the-mobile-suite, is... but that's another philosophical story and goes smaller to the quantum which I am not talking about right now.)

I have something far more interesting! What if we were to get inside an absolutely humongous extension of our body the size of a planet? Why stop there? Imagine being the size of a galaxy? Can you go bigger... and bigger and bigger.... now look back at the universe and what do you see?

I imagine a dot of all light and matter in a void of nothing. (But what is 'nothing', and why is there 'something'?) Back to the same question . (Bare with me, my head is intact...)

(If we shrink down to quantum levels, I bet we would only detect a single dot as well).

ONE THING! (whatever you want to call it)

Why is that? It's just a fractal of the same thing reiterating itself forever deeper and deeper, but when you zoom out of all fractals they become a single point...... fractals is another topic (I can explain my single-point-fractal-when-you-zoom-out idea if others are curious.)

I heard of Richard Feynman and George Carlin talking about the shared electron, or single electron theory and I agree. (I haven't actually read about it, and I'm just a dreamer here, but it actually makes sense why there is anything at all.) We just see it the way we do like a kaleidoscope for some reason.

I have a Richard Feynman book which I'm yet to read, which is about QED. I'll have to imbibe his knowledge and get back to you on that one,Hagart. The fractals is interesting. So is the multiverse theory. Let us also remind ourselves that nothingness is headed our way. The universe expands indefinitely and its stars will die out.

[ Post made via Android ]

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

What better topic of discussion can there be than the origin of everything?

Then, I think, perhaps we can never know. Perhaps all the philosophy and the physics is futile. At some point, one explanation is just as believable as the next and we are too far away to remotely validate either.

Then I get excited and terrified at once just thinking about the possibilities and it becomes awesome to think about again.